Haraprasad Shastri

Haraprasad Shastri (Bengali: হরপ্রসাদ শাস্ত্রী) (6 December 1853 – 17 November 1931), also known as Haraprasad Bhattacharya, was an Indian academic, Sanskrit scholar, archivist and historian of Bengali literature. He is most known for discovering the Charyapada, the earliest known examples of Bengali literature.[1]

Shastri passed entrance (school-leaving) examination in 1871, First Arts, the undergraduate degree, in 1873, received a BA in 1876 and Honours in Sanskrit in 1877. Later, he was conferred the title of Shastri when he received a MA degree. The Shastri title was conferred on those who secured a first class (highest grade) and he was the only student in his batch (class) to do so. He then joined Hare School as a teacher in 1878.[1][2]

Haraprasad Shastri held numerous positions. He became a professor at the Sanskrit College in 1883. At the same time, he worked as an Assistant Translator with the Bengal government. Between 1886 and 1894, besides teaching at the Sanskrit College, he was the Librarian of the Bengal Library. In 1895 he headed the Sanskrit department at Presidency College.[1][2]

He became Principal of Sanskrit College in 1900, leaving in 1908[3] to join the government's Bureau of Information. Also, from 1921–1924, he was Professor and Head of the Department of Bengali and Sanskrit at Dhaka University.[1][2]

Shastri's first research article was "Bharat mahila", published in the periodical Bangadarshan when he was a student. Later, Shastri became a regular contributor to the periodical, which was then edited by the noted Bengali author Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, authoring around thirty articles on different topics, as well as novel reviews. He was first introduced to research by Rajendralal Mitra, a noted Indologist, and translated the Buddhist Puranas which Mitra included in the book The Sanskrit Buddhist Literature of Nepal. Shastri was also Mitra's assistant at the Asiatic Society, and became Director of Operations in Search of Sanskrit Manuscripts after Mitra's death.[1][4]

Shastri was instrumental in preparing the Catalogue of the Asiatic Society's approximately ten thousand manuscripts with the assistance of a few others.[1] The long introduction to the Catalogue contains invaluable information on the history of Sanskrit literature.

Shastri gradually became interested in collecting old Bengali manuscripts and ended up visiting Nepal several times, where, in 1907, he discovered the Charyageeti or Charyapada manuscripts.[1] His painstaking research on the manuscript led to the establishment of Charyapada as the earliest known evidence of Bengali language.[1] Shastri wrote about this finding in a 1916 paper titled "Hajar bachharer purana Bangla bhasay rachita Bauddha gan o doha" ("Buddhist songs and verses written in Bengali a thousand years ago").[2][5]

Shastri was the collector and publisher of many other old works, author of many research articles, a noted historiographer, and recipient of a number of awards and titles.[1]

"Shastri's Beneyer Meye (The Merchant’s Daughter, 1920) is written in a style that is very close to the colloquial. It reconstructs with plausibility and brilliance the domestic and social atmosphere in West Bengal in the eleventh century. His other work of fiction (Kancanmala, a story tale) also is well-written. It was first published in Bangadarshan (1883). Shastri wrote better Bengali than many of his contemporaries, old and young, and although a Sankritist of the first grade he did not care to load his literary style with learned words and Sanskritism."[6]